


a cold breeze isn’t always a bad thing

by runwithneedles



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Is there a Star Wars joke in here?, M/M, Poor Lucius, Post-Canon, Roman Britain, THIS IS A HAPPY ENDING, That’s for me to know and you to decide once you’ve read it, This kinda wrote itself, celtic britain, idk if that’s good or bad, rosemary sutcliff - Freeform, violence mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 05:56:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21221699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runwithneedles/pseuds/runwithneedles
Summary: Hilarion wakes up early, and the sight of his drooling bedfellow makes him.....sentimental??





	a cold breeze isn’t always a bad thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acchikocchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acchikocchi/gifts).

Hilarion awoke in the cold morning, the breeze nipping at his nose, turning it red, making it run. It was only barely morning. In a few hours, Alexios would wake beside him, and they would go about the emotionally, physically, mentally taxing work of training the captured tribesmen into Roman soldiers. He didn’t....REGRET his choice to do it, per se. It was just that the prospect had been a bit more noble when he’d stood on the wall next to Alexios, what felt like years ago, pledging fealty. It didn’t look exactly the same when he could smell the horseshit on his boots from the endless drills yesterday, could still taste the beer from last night in his mouth and the shade of a hangover headache. In 2000 years, someone would describe the feeling in his mouth as “tooth sweaters”, but Hilarion didn’t know that yet. 

But he didn’t have to get up just yet, and somehow he couldn’t quite get back to sleep. He turned over quietly, looking at Alexios breathing peacefully behind him. He was droooling a little, his dark hair messy and promising to stand straight up from his head as soon as he sat up. They’d had a long day yesterday: Hilarion’s body is sore from sleeping so heavily. He hadn’t even moved, and he thought it likely Alexios would feel the same. Alexios didn’t really do anything by halves, but he might think about trying it sometimes. Calming down a bit wouldn’t kill him. 

A cold draft seeps through the window: it’s not tightly sealed, and the gods only know how long ago it was built. He could actually remember if he tried, but he wasn’t going to try. The chill sends Hilarion’s mind back, fully a year and more, to the day he first saw Alexios ride into Castellum.He hadn’t loved him then, not in his heart, but he’d heard his loins’ opinion on the matter immediately. They didn’t mince words. But that was normal, frequent. Hilarion had seemingly not been born with the preferences others had. He liked what he liked, he liked big burly men and ample ladies, he liked string bean fellows and waifish women. He liked it all. Alexios certainly fell closer to the string bean end of the spectrum, but the problem with Alexios was that Hilarion loved him, in a way he had not loved many others, and certainly they had not loved him back. Or they had, but hadn’t told him, or they’d run away. 

Except Lucius. Lucius had loved him, and he’d said as much. He was like that. Not a lying bone anywhere in his body. He’d had a face like an open book, his whole heart in his eyes. Lucius had.....no, he wouldn’t think about Lucius now. He woudn’t think of what might have been. “What if” was not a currency he could spend. He would think back instead to that chilly day under the gray sky, with the harvest nearing and the crows wheeling over the fort, the trees changing to brilliant bits of gold, and watching the slight new Commander ride through the gates. 

When had it begun? It was hard to know. It had begun stirring in earnest when Alexios took up the fight at Castellum once the Praepositus had fallen, but he had known it for a certainty in the bog. Alexios like a standing stone himself, at the edge of the holy place, waiting, watching that all the men passed him safely. The feeling in that place...of a thousand unseen eyes, the weight of the layers of untold years of belief and power mingled, heady and strong. A place that made you feel as if you could only see half the world, that the rest was a many-colored mystery around a corner you couldn’t quite turn. He had felt like drowning in it, felt the thick dark seep into him, and in that moment Alexios had seemed solid and immovable, a beacon, there till the last man. That was when he’d known that whether Alexios knew or cared did not matter to the existence of it, that he would carry the love and the memory of the love to his grave. 

But something, something about finding Alexios with Lucius’ dead body next to him, Lucius’ head on his knee as if he’d just fallen asleep, had brought the certainty of it down on Hilarion like a heavy drunken hand. He would have taken such a deadly blow for the commander, and the knowledge resonated through him, a note struck just right. The trees above him, the cold wet soaking him through, the love a hardy flame, indifferent to the wind. 

He’d had dreams of that night at the bridge, many dreams, all ending the same way, the dark water pulling him under, an arrow in his throat. Over and over and over again, sometimes the images arriving just as he began to drift off, jolting him, adrenaline pumping. Some things were harder to shake than others. Some things he thought he’d never shake, they would just become familiar horrors. 

He hadn’t told Alexios then, or really ever. He had simply shown it. When he had slept with Lucius, spent long nights tipsily playing at nothing, letting him read his beloved Georgics aloud, it had been Lucius who put words to it. He said the words without glancing them off, without diluting them, just the quiet blunt fact of it whispered into Hilarion’s ear in bed. It had made him feel….uncomfortable, but not unhappy. He suspected the discomfort was just the pressure of the world, telling him such things were unworthy to be spoken. 

“Why the fuck are you awake” comes a groggy voice beside him. 

Alexios’ dark hair made him look like a grumpy brunette lion, with the faint light from the window behind him.  
“I had to piss” Hilarion lied. 

“Sure. Lie back down, you’re setting off my soldier instincts.”

“Sir, I know they’re faulty already, you don’t have to tell me.”  
Full of feelings and the first thing out his mouth is a brash retort. Hilarion lies back down and lets the introspective streak continue as Alexios settles and snuggles into the bedclothes next to him like a damn kitten. 

Finally, when he suspects Alexios is nearly asleep, Hilarion rolls over till Alexios’ hair tickles his nose.”

“with no due respect, sir, I’d die for you.” he murmurs. 

Alexios chuckles a little. 

“I know.”


End file.
